it was based on republican governor mitt romney's plan in massachusetts: romneycare. they even brought in romney's expert. >> obama gets elected, and on his health advising team is a number of my friends who were now on the obama team saying, "look, we have an opportunity to do what we were unable to do under clinton and get this done." >> narrator: there was one problem: obama had campaigned against the heritage foundation's mandate. >> to his credit, he gets a lot of people, including myself, telling him, "look, you cannot make this work without the mandate." and he says, "okay, let's do the mandate." and his advisors say, "this might not be the right thing to do." and he says, "you know, this is what the experts are telling me needs to be done. let's make this happen." >> narrator: but he chose to let congress take the lead. soon the republicans and democrats began to squabble. >> he didn't carry a big stick. he wasn't like, lbj, of course, because he hadn't sort of come up through the ranks of the senate. but it didn't seem like he had any leverage or any ability